Well, installed VL 5.8 std. This time dialer is chestnut. No luck here either. wvdial is not here either. (looked for it in gslapt) This is really unfortunate as I have tried numerous distros on older hdwr and have found VL to be blinding fast on two little PCs (300 and 533 mhz Celerons w/128mb RAM.). VL is EXACTLY what I'm looking for!

Since I am looking for a distro for really old hdwr I was very excited until now as dialup seems to be an issue. I can connect via eth0, but many users of older hdwr will likely be dialup users. Also, around here broadband is scarce.

Although I am no expert, I have setup numerous external serial port modems with no problems and I am fairly familiar with configurations ( device settings, init strings, etc.) in Kppp and many of them are present in xisp and chestnut but still no luck...

I got a little further with xisp as you have to rename the xisp_modem file to xisp_ttyS0, but now chat returns with exit=3 status. Apparently the expect string is looking for a substring. In this I have no experience.

Am familiar with Puppy and DSL but VL XFCE is a much more familiar interface to most users.

hi, I have some experience with dial-up and is a little tricky. I found some programs work rigth with /dev/ttyS0 as device, but others need /dev/modem, which should be a symlink to the proper device. The VL installer should make this symlink auto. You can try again with vasm to set your modem again. I think wvdial is the best soft around to do this, and it has great config tools. There is a package on the extra repo. To enable this repo you need to add this line to your /etc/slapt-getrc file as root, with the text editor of your choice:

I can get back to you later about the specific issues. Just wanted to let you know that I have tried 5.1 and 5.8 on two separate PCs with two separate modems (actiontec and supraexpress) on two different phone lines so I am ruling out the PCs, modems, and phone lines as it is unlikely for both in each set of those to be bad.

Please don't go away. I will be back shortly. I really would like to get VL into my inventory.

In looking through this thread, I'm surprised that nobody asked whether the serial service is being loaded at startup. By default, VL does NOT load the serial port service at startup. (BTW, the installer part of VASM gives the "no modem detected" for external serial modems, so it's "working as designed.") However, you can use VASM -> SUPER (root password) -> SERVICE -> HWSET -> SERIAL to ensure that it is loading. If the service doesn't load, no serial modem will work on VL 5.x.

Assuming that the serial service is being loaded, try using one of the dialers again. You may need to add yourself to the tty group so that you can access the modem if the modem dialer isn't set to run with suid root privileges. I'm a bit pressed for time, so I can't elaborate further at this point.

I think is too soon to play with IRQs, you should take easy shots first.We forgot to ask what kind of modem are you using too. Could you tell us the exact make and model? What kind of serial conection it uses? In which port?I used to use a UsRobotics external serial modem, and it wont work if I dont set it up in the rigth way with some switches it has in the case.

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I have used this particular modem many times with mandriva, fedora, Kanotix, Mepis, PCLOS, SAM linux.

Kppp does all configuration. just enter login name and password. Set device to ttyS0, lower connect speed to 57k and this thing works everytime. I have noticed that in general if modem query in kppp returns no info then there is trouble but so far not with this modem.....but back to 5.8 and wvdial...

I don't think this is a modem problem as wvdial continues to show ttyS0,1,2,3 are all busy, with or without the modem connected and/or turned on.

I have setserial /dev/ttyS0 as root and output shows what appears to be device configured using IRQ4 which is all by itself. Graphics USB, etc are all IRQ 3,5,11. Also, there do not seem to be any settings in BIOS to select plug n play or auto select. Although I can select some IRQ settings, Im wondering if during install, VL grabbed IRQ needed by serial to use somewhere else. OR....I'm wondering if the serial port is damaged on this PC. THis is the first time I'v had this much trouble.

well the only thing I can suggest is to possibly check the /var/log/messages file with "tail -f" when you run wvdialconf and see if it tells you anything. Other than that are you sure the correct module is loaded for that modem? You can get the scamModem tool here ( http://132.68.73.235/linmodems/index.html#scanmodem) to ensure you are getting the correct chipset modem driver. Then use "lsmod" to see what driver has actually been loaded. I would then run "minicom" to see if you can actually communicate with the modem via the command line.

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